The entire week was a pleasure for
all of us at SFPRG and we hope those of you
who were able to come and study Control
Mastery Theory with us had as stimulating and
satisfying a time. I hope many of you can come
back next year.
Last month, on February 22, we had
a Board retreat to develop a new Strategic
Plan. A
majority of board members met at David Auld's
home and brainstormed about what we would
like to see happen in the next five years.
We first reviewed our last Strategic Plan,
noting what we had accomplished from that
time and what still needed to be done. We
also discussed some of the issues challenging
us in the near future such as finding a
stable location for SFPRG after our current
lease expires in September 2012.
We need to develop a committee that will
be devoted to this issue full time starting
now. If there
are any people interested in SFPRG and real
estate, we could use your energy and
expertise to help us plan and find a new space.
Our larger goals were that we wanted to
be part of a vibrant intellectual community
that included more people from the younger
generation. Efforts need to be made to
nurture the younger practitioners, recent
graduates of the Clinic, to develop their
practices and help move them into
participating and leadership roles in SFPRG.
We expressed a wish to expand our
presence locally in the Bay Area as well as
nationally and internationally. It was
suggested that we increase our connections to
other local organizations such as graduate
schools and training programs. We want to
develop a speakers' bureau that assigns
interested members to give talks at local
grand rounds and give more case conferences
at local training programs.
Other ideas were to have SFPRG offer free
clinical or research consultation for
participants following conferences.
In order to expand our presence here and
abroad, we need to bring some new
people onto the Education Committee whose
only job it is to plan conferences and
collaborate with colleagues throughout the
country and across the world. This is
something we have done to some degree for
many years but we need to plan more
systematically.
Board members felt the Clinic was a very
important asset to our group and could be the
centerpiece for training and fundraising.
Several members have talked about the
possibility of expanding the Clinic to the
East Bay and perhaps other locations.
The issue of expanding research was discussed,
particularly teaching previous SFPRG research
to the Interns and making research
opportunities more available to interns who
are interested. Some of the Interns who are
not busy enough due to slow clinical
referrals should be offered the opportunity
to increase their hours by participating in
clearly defined, ready to go research
projects. This is a goal the research
committee is putting energy into and refining.
We also need to ensure our financial
viability, which means a more organized and
focused grant writing and fundraising
initiative. We would like to hire a
development specialist. Hopefully, by next
month the new Strategic Plan will be written
up and made available on our website.
Don't forget to put John Curtis and
George Lockwood on your calendars for May 30,
2009, discussing treatment of Borderline
Personality Disorder from Control Mastery and
Schema Therapy points of view. I wish you
all a good month and will be back again in
April.
Steve Foreman
